Monet, Claude
Monet, Claude (b. Nov. 14, 1840, Paris, Fr .-- d.
Dec. 5, 1926, Giverny)
French
painter, initiator, leader, and unswerving advocate of the Impressionist style.
He is regarded as the archetypal Impressionist in that his devotion to the
ideals of the movement was unwavering throughout his long career, and it is
fitting that one of his pictures - Impression: Sunrise (Musйe
Marmottan, Paris, 1872) - gave the group his name.
His
youth was spent in Le Havre, where he first excelled as a caricaturist but was
then converted to landscape painting by his early mentor Boudin, from whom he
derived his firm predilection for painting out of doors. In 1859 he studied in
Paris at the Atelier Suisse and formed a friendship with Pissarro. After two
years 'military service in Algiers, he returned to Le Havre and met Jongkind,
to whom he said he owed `the definitive education of my eye '. He then, in 1862,
entered the studio of Gleyre in Paris and there met Renoir, Sisley, and
Bazille, with whom he was to form the nucleus of the Impressionist group.
Monet's devotion to painting out of doors is illustrated by the famous story
concerning one of his most ambitious early works, Women in the Garden
(Musйe d'Orsay, Paris; 1866-67). The picture is about 2.5 meters high and to
enable him to paint all of it outside he had a trench dug in the garden so that
the canvas could be raised or lowered by pulleys to the height he required.
Courbet visited him when he was working on it and said Monet would not paint
even the leaves in the background unless the lighting conditions were exactly
right.
During
the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) he took refuge in England with Pissarro: he
studied the work of Constable and Turner, painted the Thames and London parks,
and met the dealer Durand-Ruel, who was to become one of the great champions of
the Impressionists. From 1871 to 1878 Monet lived at Argenteuil, a village on
the Seine near Paris, and here were painted some of the most joyous and famous
works of the Impressionist movement, not only by Monet, but by his visitors
Manet, Renoir and Sisley. In 1878 he moved to Vйtheuil and in 1883 he settled
at Giverny, also on the Seine, but about 40 miles from Paris. After having
experienced extreme poverty, Monet began to prosper. By 1890 he was successful
enough to buy the house at Giverny he had previously rented and in 1892 he
married his mistress, with whom he had begun an affair in 1876, three years
before the death of his first wife. From 1890 he concentrated on series of
pictures in which he painted the same subject at different times of the day in
different lights --- Haystacks or Grainstacks (1890-91)
and Rouen Cathedral (1891-95) are the best known. He continued to
travel widely, visiting London and Venice several times (and also Norway as a
guest of Queen Christiana), but increasingly his attention was focused on the
celebrated water-garden he created at Giverny, which served as the theme for
the series of paintings on Water-lilies that began in 1899 and
grew to dominate his work completely (in 1914 he had a special studio built in
the grounds of his house so he could work on the huge canvases).
In
his final years he was troubled by failing eyesight, but he painted until the
end. He was enormously prolific and many major galleries have examples of his
work.
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